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I have always been a big fan of the war movie genre, especially those great World War II epics that came out during a time period that lasted from the late 50’s through roughly 1970, or from the release of BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAII through the release of PATTON. In between we got THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE LONGEST DAY and THE GREAT ESCAPE among others. But for my money, the best and most bad ass of them all was THE DIRTY DOZEN, a cynical, no holds barred ode to carnage that broke new ground in what American film makers could show and say in popular entertainment. It’s toxic masculinity at its best, and I love every damn minute of it.
The plot is so well known now that it has become a cliché: a ragtag group of misfits and losers – in this case American soldiers convicted of high crimes - including murder – are brought together by a tough leader who believes in them, whipped into shape until they can work as a team, and then attempt an impossible, or suicidal, mission. In the case of THE DIRTY DOZEN, they are GI’s imprisoned near London and waiting to be hung a few months before D-Day. Somebody in the high command (it is never made clear who) orders that a group of psychos, thieves, rapists, and back shooters be trained and then dropped into occupied France just prior to the invasion, where they will take out a large contingent of the Nazi brass who are on R & R at a country estate. They executed this plot so well, that many believe the movie, and the bestselling book it was adapted from, are based on fact, but as Dale Dye makes plain on the commentary for two disc DVD edition, no sane American officer would ever sign on to such a scheme. That didn’t matter to audiences in 1967, who responded enthusiastically to the movie’s gritty anti-authority attitude and lack of restraint when it came to violence; it was a year filled with films that spoke to the turbulent mid 1960’s in America: BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GRADUATE, COOL HAND LUKE, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. And THE DIRTY DOZEN proved to be their equal, and they did it within the setting of the United States military, a very controversial institution in a country where young men were being drafted and sent to fight in an increasingly unpopular war. Moreover, THE DIRTY DOZEN would prove to be just as popular with many members of the Greatest Generation as well, no small feat.
One of the reasons why I love this movie is the fantastic cast, headed by Lee Marvin, one of my all time favorites; who had just won the Best Actor Oscar for CAT BALLOU, and was now a certified leading man after years of playing some of the vilest villains ever to grace a Hollywood film. It is interesting that Marvin’s Major Reisman is often just as nasty as any of his bad guys. In almost all of his roles, and certainly in his best ones, Lee Marvin radiated menace and a capacity for violence that was palpable; off screen, he was a hard drinking Marine veteran of combat in the Pacific, and the barely contained ferocity he brought to so many of his parts came from an honest place. And Marvin was given some real hard cases to play off of, starting with Jim Brown’s defiant black soldier who killed some racists who messed with him; John Cassavetes’s drafted street punk; Clint Walker’s easy going, until you push him too far, American Indian; Telly Savalas’s religious fanatic rapist; Donald Sutherland’s too dumb to know better loser; and best of all, Charles Bronson, as a good soldier who made the mistake of shooting a coward in the back in front of witnesses. Then there is Ernest Borgnine and Robert Webber as a pair of Generals, George Kennedy and Ralph Meeker as fellow officers, Robert Ryan as Reisman’s chief antagonist, Richard Jaeckel as an MP. All together, they make one of the finest ensembles ever assembled for any movie, and every one of them at the top of their game.
But the real hero of THE DIRTY DOZEN is director Robert Aldrich; a man who excelled in any and all genres: horror, comedy, westerns, and melodramas. A thorough professional who knew how to get the best out of his actors, while delivering solid entertainment, DOZEN would prove to be one of his greatest and most enduring hits. The DVD commentary quotes verbatim from some of the memos Aldrich sent to the producers at Warner Brothers early in the production, and they reveal a man who knew how to get to the heart of the material, understood what he wanted and how to get it altogether up there on the screen. It was Aldrich who took Nunnally Johnson’s original script, which was described as “perfect for a rollicking comedy in 1945,” and had it rewritten to match contemporary sensibilities, tuning it from a John Wayne (who had been hired originally) war film into a Lee Marvin war film. There was a big difference. It was Aldrich and new screenwriter, Lukas Heller, who made the changes that gave the film its punch, such as having the one black prisoner, played by Brown, say things like “that’s your war, not mine;” he could just as easily have been speaking about Vietnam and not the war against the Germans. They were responsible for turning Marvin’s character into a maverick officer, one who has just as little respect for his superiors as do the condemned men he has to lead to the slaughter. There is a definite us against the system theme right from the very beginning, where Major Reisman witnesses a condemned soldier go to the gallows before getting his marching orders from Borgnine and Webber. That those in charge cared only about enhancing themselves at the expense of those they could exploit had been a long time theme in American popular culture, and Aldrich and Heller infused the script with the working man’s point of view that those who get their hands dirty can fix the problem much better and in much less time if only the bosses would get their useless rear ends out of the way and let them do what needs to be done. That the working stiffs and underdogs here are guilty of the worst crimes is part of the subversive appeal of the DOZEN. That the United States military would find a way to make expert use of the worst kind of killers was a bracing dose of cynicism at the time. Aldrich and Heller also made it a redemption story where the scum of the earth learn to work together, trust each other, follow a leader who earns, and learns to return, their respect. By the end, they are stand up heroes (except for Savalas’s hateful degenerate), who fulfill their mission at the cost of most of their lives.
A good example of Aldrich’s touch as a director is plainly seen when Marvin meets with Borgnine and Webber to argue for his men when the Generals are ready to scrap the mission after weeks of training and send the prisoners back for execution of their sentences. When the camera is on either Borgnine or Webber, a bust of a patrician Roman is in the frame. In contrast, on the wall behind Marvin is a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt, as if to align the brass with the tyrants who went thumbs up or thumbs down on the lives of those beneath them, while a democratically chosen leader, and champion of the common man, literally has Marvin’s back.
As someone who has done some writing, I am a great admirer of the story structure of THE DIRTY DOZEN, which is laid out in three perfect acts; the first defines the mission, introduces the principle players and proceeds with the training; the second act concerns a crucial war game where the unit proves to Reisman and his superiors that they can pull off their dangerous mission; the third act is the mission itself behind German lines and at the chateau in France, where things turn very deadly. Along the way, there are some of the most memorable scenes from any war movie, starting with Marvin’s individual meeting with Bronson, Brown, Savalas and the rest, where characters are defined with only a few words; Major Reisman’s “encouragement” when Trini Lopez (how did he ever get cast in this?) chokes during a rope climbing exercise; Sutherland inspecting the troops when he has to impersonate a General on the spur of the moment; the capture of Ryan’s HQ at the climax of the war game, when Bronson and the rest of the men laugh triumphantly at having made utter fools of their betters. The high point of the movie is of course the assault on the French chateau, where one man has to sacrifice himself on the roof to knock out a radio tower in one memorable bit. This is where Aldrich really let the cruelty and sadism of this story shine, especially in the scene where Jim Brown douses the trapped German officers (and their women) with gasoline, and then ignites the cellar by tossing grenades down an air shaft. The sight of a black man smiling at the prospect of incinerating whites was a very potent image in 1967, and one that offended the sensibilities of many. One critic flatly stated that American soldiers had never acted in this way; clearly he wasn’t watching the nightly news from Vietnam at the time. It has been speculated that the image of Brown murdering white people cost Aldrich an Oscar nomination for Best Director. Also very memorable is Savalas’s encounter with the German whore, which ends badly for all involved.
If most of the actors were cast to type, then they rose to the occasion and did their best work, although Borgnine does chew the scenery in some his scenes; his work here, and that of the criminally underrated Ryan, helped get them parts in Sam Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH. Both Brown and Bronson would go on the be stars in their own right in the years ahead, though out of the large cast, only Cassavetes, who is very good, would get a Supporting Actor nomination. Aldrich’s directing career would continue for nearly two more decades, but I don’t think he ever again made something as special as THE DIRTY DOZEN.
But as much as I love THE DIRTY DOZEN, I do understand that it has been a long time since I first saw it as a kid, and when I recently purchased the two disc set and was able to watch and uncut version for the first time in too many years, I wondered how well it would hold up. Would the aspects of it that spoke to the 60’s so well and the wonderful cast filled with some of the greatest tough guy actors of all time appear hopelessly out of date in the 21st Century? I say no way, for the big ensemble action movie has never gone away in the years since THE DIRTY DOZEN was released, it has just changed with the times and the audience. Action flicks like THE ROCK and CON AIR are literal descendants of the DOZEN, and when I went to see CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY a few years ago, I could hear echoes of Lee Marvin and company in the theater. That is quite a legacy.
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The Dirty Dozen bluray
Im a big Lee Marvin Fan, Ernest Borgnine fan as well. I like The Dirty Dozen and even more than the later Yugoslavia made films. Only thing I do not like is the rebellious tone and antiauthority tone. It has interesting behind the scene featurette and it's an all star cast.I Mean Telly is in it.
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Erik
FANTASTICA!
Reviewed in Mexico on November 23, 2023
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